


CONTENTS UNSPECIFIED

by rowanthestrange_yugihell



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: A Great Unknown, And The Nature Thereof, F/F, No TARDIS Left Behind, On TARDISes, Vague Covid-19 Reference, revolution of the daleks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:29:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28615125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowanthestrange_yugihell/pseuds/rowanthestrange_yugihell
Summary: The Void. The Daleks. A TARDIS. A Doctor.A Rescue.
Relationships: Thasmin - Relationship, Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 12
Kudos: 33





	CONTENTS UNSPECIFIED

* * *

  


It’s the most reluctant distress signal she’s ever had. 

Her ship receives it. Then it cancels it. Sends it again. Cancels. Sends it...

“Aaaand we’re sticking with ‘help’ now, OK then.”

The signal is hurtling out into the void. Her own TARDIS hums and the lights hiccup as she tries to set a moving trace in a realm that can’t technically have co-ordinates, and the last nano-particles stopped about a mile back.

“Don’t worry, we’ve got this. No TARDIS left behind, yeah?” There’s a pause as if they’re thinking about it, but then their engines thrum with bravado. “That’s the spirit! They don’t call you The Diner At The End Of The Universe for nothing!”

**_boop BOOP_ **

  


* * *

  


By her calculations, they should have around nineteen minutes.

“Possibly a bit less, with space and time being a bit of an iffy concept right now, not gonna lie, it’s more a gut feel?”

Her TARDIS burbles happily. They trust her gut instincts. And in fairness, they’re usually pretty good - comes with the loss of function probably, you can rule out indigestion.

The trace isn’t going anywhere, literally, it just hangs at the last point of logically correct time and space. So they try a different tack, using the last positions of the previous SOS signals and drawing a straight line out from there, planning to spot the ship visually.

But they’ve only flown for about a minute and a half before they both simultaneously get cold feet/lower decks, and scurry back to mathematical accuracy.

“I know it doesn’t really mean that two and two equals fish, but it feels like it doesn’t it?” She rambles. The TARDIS growls. Not at her, it’s just their metaphorical thinking gears grinding.

Occasionally a flash appears on the screen that would usually have a charted flight path at this point.

“...That’s the signal locking on and reaching us, right? Well, if it’s doing that, why can’t we track it back?”

Another screen that may or may not be an etch-a-sketch right now draws a surprisingly detailed catfish.

“I mean at _that precise moment_ , not trying to work it all out afterwards. In that exact fraction of a second we know where it is, right? So we prepare to dematerialise and rematerialise exactly where that flash is, when it shows up, and hopefully it’ll have moved just enough away so we don’t cause a time ram explosion whatever.”

_**Hooo** _

It takes her two goes, the first time mistiming the button press and dropping them into literal nowhere, but that’s what they set up the beacon for, to help get them out again. Still, after they reset, it does rather focus her mind the second time because if anything goes wrong she doesn’t intend to spend the rest of her immortal life lost in the void

There’s a bit of a bump as they tap the other ship, which doesn't stop, and her TARDIS immediately starts up their Local Trailing System, like they’re holding on by their fingertips.

Leaning over a microphone, she presses the button beside it.

“Six minutes isn’t bad, could’ve been worse. How’re you doing in there? Name and nature of the emergency and all that,” she rabbits, regretting she didn't think of what she was going to say beforehand, “pilot or ship request is fine, no need to fake or anything, internal or broadcast audio, you’re not my first TARDIS. Obviously.” She winces and the air conditioning kicks on.

A second or so later, one of her monitors blinks to life, showing video like a bad handheld camera in a horror movie. Except it’s travelling over a very classic-looking console. She gets a brief glimpse at a screen still saying CONTENTS UNSPECIFIED, but it’s not lingered on, which means it’s already dropped the charade that so many of them think necessary - after all, a TARDIS isn’t supposed to act independently. The rest of the panning slowly moves across the controllers and dials set into a white panel.

“Well good news, I know what at least a third of those buttons do. Can you stop your flight or is there a navigation failure? -Nothing to do with you personally, I’m sure. Physical malfunction I mean.”

The TARDIS’s camera that’s livestreaming to her continues to move over and down, sharp and wobbly, like it’s on a thin stalk that definitely isn’t meant to be used this way. She peers closely at the small monitor in its view while it attempts to refocus on the content instead of the points of light in its reflection: 'CONTROLS LOCKED. CODE: DOCTOR’

Ok. Ok. Doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Could be done by, or as a protection against. No way to know yet.

“Physical lock or mental lock, sweetheart? Really matters.” She wonders if she’s sounding too patronising while the camera jumps back to its origin a lot faster this time. The larger screen shows a mass of Gallifreyan moving too quickly for human processing - even by her standards - on a shifting blue backdrop like water.

“Can I take that as mental?” She asks.

The screen turns green with a thumbs-up emoji. It’s adapting to her already, bless it. ...Or possibly patronising her back.

“Either way, that’s what I wanted to hear!” She says, as she docks her own TARDIS’s doors to the other one, and idly wonders if that’s like making them kiss.

A Doctor-lock.

Well, it won’t be the first (or fifty thousandth) time she’s gone for a walk in a pair of shoes that aren’t hers, but in her experience, they always fit perfectly.

  


* * *

  


She finds there’s something delightfully powerful in entering a room full of people yelling, and then watching them immediately shut up; whether it be politicians, angry mobs, or - in a life long gone - her students.

First time it’s happened with Daleks though.

“Do you want to live?” she asks, “Cus I’m not making promises.”

A harsh voice screeches “DA-TA BANKS IN-DI-CATE SUBJECT I-DEN-TI-FIES AS THE DOC-TOR EXTERMI-”

Another Dalek immediately shoots it.

_'No audible warning, that’s a violation right there.’_

_'Glowed, shut off, but didn’t vaporise, that’s interesting.’_

_'Dalek weapons can be used on other Daleks, did I know that?’_

_'Are they more resistant, or do they secretly have a stun setting?’_

_'I’m surrounded by active Daleks, 27 just in this room.’_

_'Probably not for very much longer though.’_

_'Does ‘dead’ mean I’m Dalek-proof?’_

She strides to the console trying to look like she’s ignoring them, her mind whirring, and her hands touching things on autopilot so she looks competent while she plans something out.

The TARDIS starts analysing her mind at the first brush of her fingertips. The buttons and switches do nothing as it - ‘she’? Something close to that, ‘she’ will do - runs through bizarre many-layered algorithms she could never hope to understand, seeing if her mind fits the lock-maker’s. And for her own part, it gives her time to read her damsel in distress a little too.

(Did not like ‘damsel in distress’, that definitely _was_ patronising, sorry.)

Young spirit in an old body? Or old spirit in a young body? That’s interesting. Wants her help but also resents it. The conflict of desire to obey orders duelling with a desire to live. She’s not a soldier - her kind have no such word - but if they did then she would have the heart of one, the sort painting tobacco-tin lids in the trenches. The need to obey at all costs is manufactured, but her loyalty is so strong it almost turns this interference into something hateful, but would that boy have ever picked up a gun if he could’ve been left to do his duty differently and painted at home? 

She can feel the lock has fallen away beneath the pattern of her mind. Time Lords don’t usually use fingerprints or faces, mental patterns are much harder to reproduce. But just as it’s not true that all fingerprints and faces are unique, a mind-based lock can be deceived, even if by a million-to-one chance. But this isn’t one. She doesn’t believe in fate or luck, just the thing that draws her to wherever she’s supposed to be.

The console stiffens beneath her, manually holding still as the soul within processes. What does it mean to have the right, but not the authority? Or the authority and not the right? The ship is so much more complex than the simple idea of someone screaming for help.

_'Most people are. Let me help you, then I’ll leave.’_

The ship relents and she immediately eases her to a stop, clearing the flight instructions. Next she goes through her list of current processes and finds the instructions for the Single-Point Fold.

Single-Point Fold. A nice sort of name, as if it were a type of origami, and not the deliberate crushing inwards of a living being in on itself, like a collapsed lung, leaving the last tiny remnant to break apart and scatter, in a billion infinitesimal pieces, into the void.

Someone programmed that into her. Wired her up to become a machine to be piloted, then made a kill switch. And then a person hit it.

“PRO-GRESS REPORT.” Dalek #13 behind her demands.

Perhaps in this case though, that last one is a little more understandable.

“Hold your horses. Not that you know what they are. Or what holding things is like either, sorry, that was insensitive.”

There’s a pause as she flips some ideas around then continues typing rapidly, rewriting and hijacking a base function.

“A HORSE IS AN EARTH O-RIG-I-NAT-ING QUAD-RU-PED THAT-”

Dalek #13 shoots Dalek #4 and she hears the clunk of its eyestalk drooping.

“Nasty bit of the void this,” she says into the silence that here is more of a soft Daleky hum. “The laws of physics all go a bit weird here, like autogenerating code, everything should be the same because it’s all following the same instructions, but the longer you leave it, the more bits break and variables float around,”

“LIKE MU-TANTS IN THE CLO-NING PROCESS.” Dalek #13 says behind her.

She doesn’t allow herself to look round, but is slightly thrown off by the oddly conversational nature of the interruption.

“Don’t know much about cloning, there’s only one of- ...Well ...Yeah, yeah, probably a lot like that. Anyway, I’m not a physician,” red pen through that, _Doctor_ the word you were looking for was 'physicist’, “but I’m pretty sure it means that we’re all only still in one piece because the TARDIS is trans-dimensional. We’re simultaneously here and not here, like Schrödinger’s cat, do you know that one?

“A CAT IS-” Dalek #22 shuts itself up as Dalek #13’s weapons turn towards it while its eye remains on her.

“AN EARLY HU-MAN EX-PLAN-A-TION OF QUANTUM SU-PER POSITION USING A CREATURE OF IN-DE-TER-MIN-ATE LIFE SIGNS IN A BOX.”

“Ooh, you’ve nearly got it, nearly, hang on.” She darts away from the console and back into her own TARDIS, shutting the door.

There’s no bang, or zap, or crunch as she sprints to her own console - not for the first time wondering why she’s never rearranged it so the diner isn’t the front room. She grabs a screen and twists it to her, but her TARDIS does her one better and with a bit of trickery they appear to make the walls transparent.

Daleks slowly float past and shift and break apart down to nothingness as she watches, all emanating from the same point, being emptied from something her brain won’t let her see - a TARDIS inside-out. Like a vampire squid. And presumably just as horrifying. Even when she tries to focus her eyes, she just gets shifty tentacly inkyness.

But as she squints at the unseeable, other things drift past and break her concentration - pieces of coloured paper, sticky notes, a roll of sellotape.

“Wait, wait, wait!” She shouts fruitlessly, pressing herself to the wall-screen-window. The code said Doctor, responded to her sort of mind, that means something. What would Daleks have needed with tape and post-its?! Why does she always miss things?

There’s a _**schwoop**_ and _**bang**_ of her TARDIS’s doors, and she runs back out into the diner. 

Lying scattered on the mat by the door are a handful of notes. She doesn’t quite kneel down and kiss the floor, but that’s because she’s never heard of a mop, not for a lack of affection.

“What would I do without you?” She whispers, bending down and gathering them up. A coffee machine bloops in a way she interprets to mean that she’d probably float in the void as an unchanging affront to the laws of physics.

Walking back to the console room, she shuffles through the papers. The largest is half pale pink, and half white and pulpy from whatever the odd splinters of space-time did to it, across the diagonal everything is lost. At the top she can read the word ‘WHY???’ underlined several times. There are bullet points going down, the list sliced off:

  * Lost
  * No ship
  * Injured
  * Bored of Earth
  * Bored of y



'Earth’. That’s one alarm bell, especially in a ship filled with Daleks. Probably didn’t try to void themselves, did they? Not with a code like-

No, no speculating when there’s reading to do.

There’s half a page of what looks like an exercise book, another list, writing getting smaller and smaller with two rows per line at the bottom, like someone with more ideas than they thought trying to keep within the page limit: Keep calling, texting, fake an invasion, real invasion, newspaper ad, twitter???, put a vid on Ryan’s YouTube, police contacts, Graham’s captain, look for weird astronomical stuff, telescope, make crop circles, message in a bottle, WhatsApp, missing persons report, pray.

Don’t make assumptions, don’t think, don’t do it.

A pale blue post-it note has a pencil sketch in the corner, someone with hair similar to her own, but wearing a long coat of the type she doesn’t get on with, who’s sat facing away from the artist. It’s very small - not ‘confidently done’ as her Year Nine art teacher would’ve said, but still nice to look at. Perhaps it’s the background colour or the artist, but the person looks lonely.

She shakes her head a little. She’s an art critic now apparently.

There’s a large pale and fluffy smudge taking up most of the rest of the sticky note. Presumably someone wrote something and violently erased it. But she can just about make out a few letters still lightly scored into the paper. There’s a C, and a T, an O, an R.

Knowing that she shouldn’t, she tries to match the drawing to every memory she has and doesn’t have, studying the rough little lines. There’s a tiny date on the drawing at the bottom. She presses the console keyboard slowly so the keys don’t click, as if she could possibly hide this from her TARDIS. Maybe...2pm, on the 23rd of November, 2020. In...Aberdeen, that’s always an easy land.

CO-ORDINATES DENIED

“What? Why?” She asks loudly, forgetting she was supposed to be stealthy.

SOL-3 LOCKDOWN, INVALID DATE/TIME, PLEASE CHOOSE AGAIN

She tries twice more, earlier, later, then crouches down to look the screen square in the LCD’s.

“Tell me that’s just because of the Doctor taking care of these Daleks.”

An old-fashioned tape recorder clicks on, _“that’s just because of the Doctor taking care of these Daleks.”_

“Why don’t I believe me?” she sighs. “Not seen that before. Even for Daleks. You know how I said to not let me access anything from 2015 to 2500? Can we just...”

_“Don’t ever let me see the database for recent Earth history. Future, whatever. I mean it, don’t let me do it, even if I beg, and no physical encyclopaedias from that time either. White out anything that mentions it, this is now a repressive authoritarian regime, wipe it out. I want a full 1984 job.”_

“Blocked out the ‘repressive regime’ bit there.” She mumbles, standing up.

The post-it is a little crumpled where she’s been holding it, and she loosens her grip, smoothing it out and lets her eyes roam over it. It happens all too frequently, the urge to go and find them. Follow them. Getting a lead in a case for a missing person who isn’t. And sometimes, like this, the mystery of little enticing hints of a Doctor neither her nor _them_ \- not any of the ones she knows, which should be all of them, but they’re still _her_ Doctor. They should be impossible, but they aren’t.

Of course, there’s nothing to suggest this one is. There’s lots of ‘the Doctor’s out there. A side-effect of being known across the universe - a lot of copycats out there, saving planets from Daleks, same sort of hero complex, same sort of mind. Takes one to know one though, and she understands the trick to telling apart _her_ Doctor from _a_ Doctor. But this sketch alone can’t help her, and any that might’ve existed have now dissolved in the void.

You can’t tell the Doctor by how they look, the way they act, the style they dress, the company they keep, even the language that they speak. But there’s always one thing that sets them apart.

There’s a shift that seems to take up the whole of the dark mass outside.

She looks up.

Even though she’s staring right at it, she doesn’t truly see the moment the TARDIS flips the right side out again, exactly as she’d coded. Just has a heaving sense of nausea in a stomach that doesn’t work.

Formless everything-nothingness breaks like a wave, leaving only the colour of a deep warm sea behind, and white text on black.

_POLICE public call BOX_

The TARDIS doesn’t give her the opportunity to Pull To Open - the invitation on a doorplate that’s inverse to the one she knows best. Doesn’t let her check that all the Daleks emptied out, or share her beacon back to safety. But instead, without a flight path, or any destination she knows, the ship flies away from her, further into the deepening darkness.

  



End file.
